The Music of Global Warming

We're all screwed. Soon we'll be leading frugal, monotonous, energy-efficient lives. Drastic lifestyle reductions are urgently needed to save the planet. It is a moral imperative (moral euphoria, to some) — that, and a matter of taxes, regulations, rules, and mandates. Occupying solar-powered hovels, we'll eat vegetarian meals in dim kitchens, carpool in horrid electric vehicles to tedious green jobs, work and play in staggering heat and intense dust (ever-watchful for deadly storms and dying species), and shower under tepid drizzles from dwindling water supplies. Our dysfunctional government is broke and our economy has seen its best days. China is the future. And there will be plenty of bad music.

In the 1980s, right after the global cooling scare of the 1970s, scientists began scaring us about global warming (GW). In the 1990s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) upped the ante to anthropogenic GW (AGW). By 2006, Al Gore brought us catastrophic AGW (CAGW). Today, according to Al and his apostles, we have progressed to incomprehensible CAGW (ICAGW).

For the most part, the leaders of the global warming movement are cultural elites and technocrats who, having failed to save the world through socialism, turned to environmentalism.

For the most part, the leaders of the global warming movement are cultural elites and technocrats who, having failed to save the world through socialism, turned to environmentalism. They are from the ranks of the world's most earth-caring organizations (Friends of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action, Environmental Defense, etc.) and,because of their ecclesiastical benevolence and dedication, have formed a global clericy to which our planet's salvation is entrusted.

This cabal has acquired immense political power through incessant planet alarms of ever-increasing magnitude and variety. The cabal gathers privately from time to time in ritualistic séance. Under subdued lighting and the influence of whale songs, Gregorian chants, and Halloween music, members tell one another climate monster-under-the-bed stories until they are frightened to exhaustion. The most astounding stories are then expressed, publicly, through cries of wolf :

Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States

Dust bowls over the US SW and many other heavily populated regions around the globe

Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life

More severe hurricanes, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, proximate to the United States

Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”

One of the latest cry wolf announcements is that the worst of these incomprehensible impacts will be “largely irreversible for 1000 years.” Holy shit! Now we're talking LIICAGW.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that industrialized countries must spend $45 trillion over the next 40 years to be Kyoto-compliant. Make that $101 trillion to get us to 2100. And God only knows the cost of those fearsome "unknown unknowns." But a 1998 US Energy Information Administration (EIA) study found that the Kyoto treaty would cost the US economy $400 billion per year — roughly $570 billion annually today. Thus, the US tab for the next 90 years would be about $51.3 trillion. That George Bush would have none of this, angered the cabal.

The anger festered. When we (the only fully industrialized country smart enough to pass on the frantic planet decarbonization race) became skeptical about the AGW hypothesis itself, anger became ridicule. We became ignorant climate deniers. The Economist admonished us that "America needs to build some ladders to help everyone climb out [of the denial]." And lastSeptember, former president and standing jokeBill Clinton said that such skepticism makes us look like "a joke."

A humorless President Obama wants to be the ladder builder. After all, Americans should pay their fair share. At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, he promised that US emissions in 2050 will be 83% below 2005 levels. Many Americans cheered, possibly believing that Mr. Obama's soaring rhetoric had a modicum of substance behind it — perhaps a study showing that we can achieve his goal by tweaking our standard of living with Chevy Volts (tires fully inflated), GE Compact Fluorescents, and a few Solyndra solar panels. But a more thoughtful examination indicates that Americans, especially children and grandchildren, may find the adjustment very arduous. For example, to reduce 2050 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels, George Will pointed out, "2050 emissions will [need to] equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen."

Under subdued lighting and the influence of whale songs, Gregorian chants, and Halloween music, members tell one another climate monster-under-the-bed stories until they are frightened to exhaustion.

Competing with such dire realizations has troubled the cabal. Its most patronizing scientists now struggle to create climate alarms more astounding than economic reality. As the supply of disasters that can be attributed to man shrinks, rumor has it that future announcements of planet tragedies will have Sarah McLachlanmusic playing in the background. Now that’s cruelty to animals. The incorporation of depressing music is more than symbolism. The thinking seems to be that a milieu of despair will amplify the urgency of government action and stimulate the global warming industry.

Many believe that the cabal should lighten up. The absence of warming since 1998 should help. Some have suggested that at its next monsters-under-the-bed meeting, the cabal should watch An Inconvenient Truth a few times, but with banjo music for the soundtrack. Al Gore will seem more comical, LIICAGW less horrifying. But banjos will not brighten the mood in our languishing economy. For over three years unemployment has exceeded 8%, the housing market has been a shambles, and GDP growth has been feeble at best. With our national debt over $15 trillion and annual deficits over $1 trillion, we currently borrow 43 cents on every dollar we spend. Oil prices are rising, and we are not allowed to drill enough of our own or pump new supplies in from Canada. We can't even afford ObamaCare, and the EPA is beginning to charge us for carbon.

Yet, we are seen as the climate idiots and villains, an implacable obstacle to the cabal's bold global vision. In contrast, China gets a pass. The cabal would have us pay $51 trillion to help save the planet, while China — the world's most populous country, with 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities and an economic furnace relentlessly stoked with as much greenhouse-gas-emitting coal and oil as it can find — pays nothing. With its rapidly growing economic and military power, China has been likened to the Germany of a century ago. Western Europe’s appeasement of Germany led to World War II. Awarding a colossal carbon tax break to an aggressive, planet-ravaging China trumps appeasement with encouragement.

In 2005, James Fallows wrote an article called “Countdown to a Meltdown.” Appearing in The Atlantic as a cover story, it was a speculative article about the American political-economic conditions that Fallows imagined would increasingly worsen through 2016, culminating in turmoil, ruin, and, I'm guessing, record-breaking sales of songs running the gamut from “Yesterday” to “Taps.” The article enshrined an opinion of America that is no doubt still cherished by all self-respecting members of the cabal.

Fallows’ view was that by 2016, China would have better schools, better roads and highways, and, having sent a spacecraft to Mars, better science than the United States. He saw America in 2016 as a place with "an undereducated work force" and "a rundown infrastructure." We would become a stagnant, destitute country where "young people, seeking opportunity, have to wait for old people to die," where "smoking and eating junk food have become for our underemployed class what swilling vodka was for the dispossessed in Boris Yeltsin's Russia." Holy blessed shit! This is even more astounding than LIICAGW.

The thinking seems to be that a milieu of despair will amplify the urgency of government action and stimulate the global warming industry.

Fallows imagined that in 2016, China would have "20 Harvards," as opposed to our one (which would become an academic "theme park" by 2016). Perhaps, therefore, our climate alarmists should consider a visit to Chinese universities, where they would profit from entry-level science and economics courses — not the soft, funny-book classes that they might get here, but the ones with objectivity and rigor. Better yet, they might consider a permanent move to China. In that country, their elitist credentials would surely land them the best jobs at the best companies, especially enlightened businesses that have relocated to escape the anticipated economic blight of America.

It is possible that incessant braying, accompanied by Chinese music, could persuade Communist Party officials of the urgent need for China to pay its fair share in thwarting climate hobgoblins. It's not clear how it will pass as ladder-building music, but it's an elegant metaphor for the discord between imagined climate catastrophes and real economic imperatives. As P.J. O'Rourke said in All the Trouble in the World, it is music that "sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest." I'll be here in America, astoundingly skeptical.

About this AuthorSteve Murphy is a retired missile defense systems engineer and software developer living on top of Green Mountain in Huntsville AL, where he does a little consulting, plays the stock market and writes — mostly about economics, science, and American life. He can be contacted at sfm@hiwaay.net.

Comments

Johnimo

No more cross country skiing AGW! Is that what I'm faced with, Steve? I love to go south of Bozeman and ski up the Bighorn Trail, returning to the highway via the Fawn Pass drainage. Will it all end? Will an electric vehicle be capable of hauling me and my gear to the trailhead on a really cold Winter day? Will they make electric trucks that can haul beer to the Corral Cafe? It's all so hopeless; I think I'll go add another log to the wood burning stove and hunker down 'til the end.